Monday, October 06, 2008

High Pass Sharpen In Paint Shop Pro 9

I use Paint Shop Pro version 9 and it does not have a high pass sharpen filter.
But it is possible to do it manually.
I dug this up from an old Corel newsgroup post.

High Pass Sharpen
1. Duplicate the image layer.
2. Duplicate the duplicate layer.
3. Set the opacity of the topmost layer to 50%.
4. Gaussian Blur the layer. Start with something like a Radius of 1.00. (This is where and how you define what "high" spatial frequencies you are going to "pass".)
5. Do Negative Image on the blurred layer. (Adjust, Color Balance, Negative Image)
6. Switch off the visibility of the original image layer.
7. Merge Visible the top two layers.
8. Run Histogram Stretch on the merged result layer to magnify the fine detail. (Adjust, Brightness and Contrast, Histogram Stretch)
9. Make your original layer visible again.
10. Set the blend mode of the topmost layer to Hard Light, Soft Light or Overlay depending on how aggressive you want the effect to be and adjust the layer opacity to control the sharpening effect.

To Script this (make these steps automatic with a click of a button):
Don't record step 10 in a script, just adjust it by hand. All the recorded steps 1 to 9 can be marked Silent in the script, but make step 4 interactive.

My Notes:
On the photo I tried it on, Effects, User Defined Filter, High pass Preset was similar to the above High Pass Sharpen when blend mode was set to Hard Light in step 10. Might not always be the case for all photos, but something to try.

High Pass Sharpen is used to get a certain photography effect, called the "Dave Hill Look" discussed at flickr strobist group. Instead of the Photoshop Vivid Light, I used Paint Shop Pro Soft Light layer blend mode.

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